Former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga has said that during her time in office she gave official appointments to no relative at all, apart from a single trusted domestic worker, and that every other appointment was made strictly on merit and experience.
She made the remarks at a public event, Hiru News reported on Saturday. The report frames the speech as a reflection on balancing the duties of the presidency with raising two children.
The claim worth isolating
Most of what Kumaratunga described is personal: a working day of roughly 15 hours, beginning at 7.30 a.m. once her children had left for school and running late into the night; household finances managed by selling land and keeping close domestic accounts; a reliance on skilled officials to carry government business.
The appointments line is the part that is not personal. Sri Lanka’s political argument for the past two decades has run substantially on the question of who gets placed in state office and on whose recommendation — and it is the charge underlying a long sequence of prosecutions now before the courts. A former head of state stating, on the record, that she made no family appointments is a claim about that argument, whoever is listening.
Kumaratunga names the exception herself rather than leaving it to be found, which is the more credible form of the claim. Hiru does not say what position the domestic worker was appointed to.
What she said about her children
Kumaratunga said her children received the highest level of education and continue to live lives free of corruption or controversy. She credited her own schooling at a convent and the example set by her parents, and argued that a demanding career and raising children as good citizens are compatible if professional and personal responsibilities are properly organised.
Her parents were S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and Sirimavo Bandaranaike, both prime ministers of Sri Lanka; her mother was the world’s first woman head of government. Kumaratunga served as president from 1994 to 2005, the only woman to have held the office.
Caveats
This account rests on a single outlet. Hiru does not name the event, give its venue, or say on what date the speech was delivered — only that it took place “recently.” No other verified newsroom had carried the remarks at the time of writing, so the wording above is Hiru’s summary rather than a direct transcript, and none of the quotations in its report are presented verbatim.
Readers should also note that a statement of this kind is an account given by its subject. Nothing in the report indicates that the claim about appointments has been independently checked against the appointment records of the 1994–2005 administrations.
Not reported
Hiru gives no date, venue or occasion for the speech, does not identify the audience, and does not say whether Kumaratunga was responding to a question or delivering prepared remarks. It does not name the domestic worker’s post, say which administration made the appointment, or indicate whether she addressed any specific allegation.
